


Eurydike's Stepchildren

by Brighid



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Angst, Episode Related: Sentinel Too, M/M, Part Two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 01:33:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/792499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drowning doesn't always require water.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eurydike's Stepchildren

**Author's Note:**

> This is a dark bit begun in a dark time. Me, I'm still surfacing. While it is related to STP2, it has references to M101 and DEoBS. 
> 
> For Beth. = )

## Eurydike's Stepchildren

by Brighid

Author's disclaimer: Not mine. Never will be. I'm not making any money. Well, at this, anyway.

* * *

Eurydike's Stepchildren 

By Brighid 

It was spring in Cascade, but Jim Ellison was cold. Cold after the heat of Mexico. Cold after the long flight and still longer night hauling Sandburg out of the hastily set-up futon and down to the Emergency. Cold after sitting on his ass for hours on end just listening to his partner trying to breathe, trying to pull air into his abused, congested lungs. Listening to Blair Sandburg drowning all over again. 

He sat for a moment in the cab of his truck and wondered if he'd ever be warm again, and wondered, tiredly, when the fuck things would just settle down so he could find some sort of even keel again. 

He sighed once, twice, then forced himself out of the truck cab and around to the bed. With the slow, over precise movements of the utterly exhausted, he unhooked the bungies holding down Sandburg's boxes. It had taken a bit of talking to get the weekend security to let him in on a Sunday, but Bernard had seen him around over the years, and the old guy had relented pretty quickly. Hell, he'd even helped haul some of the smaller boxes down. He "tsked" and muttered and commiserated, totally unsurprised that Sandburg had managed to not only to get himself drowned but had also picked up pneumonia and a pleural infection when 'vacationing' down in sunny southern climes. 

"Always was a contrary kid," the old man said ruminatively, watching Jim secure a large portion of Blair's worldly goods in the truck bed. "But a likeable little bastard, all the same." Jim had just nodded, grunted some sort of agreement and driven off as fast as he could, desperate to reach the loft, needing to anchor himself in it, needing to somehow _undo_ all the shit that happened there, but not really even knowing how to begin. 

Now he looked down at the boxes, pretty much untouched since he'd packed them up two weeks before, and a rush of knee-shaking, gut-churning doubt raged through him. He swallowed hard, looked at the too-few boxes that seemed too small, too shallow to hold the life of his Guide, and yet at the same time seemed too many and too heavy to even begin trying to rebuild with. The last few months had been ... rough didn't even begin to describe it. The taste of chlorine fouled his mouth, a sensory ghost, made him gag slightly even as he stacked the boxes by the building door. 

He swallowed it down; there was no other choice, really. It was all he knew how to do; it was all life had taught him to do. In his own way, Jim Ellison has spent almost forty years in the process of drowning. Going down one more time was nothing to fall apart over, nothing to lose his perspective about. 

And yet, when Monday's dawn broke, it found him sitting hollow-eyed and sleepless in a muddle of Blair's possessions, a broken wooden flute cradled in his trembling hands. Reality closed over his head, and he found, quite suddenly and much to his despair, that he could barely breathe at all. 

)0( 

Blair studied Jim's face critically through half-closed lashes. Almost two weeks now, he'd been in hospital, and they'd yet to discuss anything. _Anything_. Not that Jim was avoiding him. The younger man could almost set his watch by Jim's visits -- a quick stop in on the way to the station, a visit over lunch, and then a good part of the evening together. Hell, he even made small talk: basketball and politics and what stupid-ass thing Henri and Rafe had gotten up to, but that was it. All surface and no depth. Not once did Jim refer to their shared vision after the drowning, or the vision in the grotto at the Temple of the Sentinels. Anytime Blair tried to steer the conversation in that general direction Jim got all closed up and quiet and found a good reason to go to the vending machines or the bathroom. 

Apparently, as far as Jim Ellison was concerned, it was over and done with, and could we just move on, Sandburg? Blair snorted softly, only to end up coughing. He ended up dropping the e-mails Jim had printed up for him. It was only one, searing gasp before Jim was there, helping him to lean forward, supporting him in rock-steady arms as he coughed up something thick and wet and ugly into the tissues Jim held up under his nose. 

At long last it subsided, and Jim laid him back against the upright bed with careful hands. Blair caught him sneaking a glance at the tissue before tossing it into the trash. "What? That is so gross, man," Blair wheezed. "What the hell were you doing?" 

Jim's face coloured up, and he looked from side to side at the other beds in the four-man room. "Checking for infection," Jim answered softly. "Smells clear, looks clean. The antibiotics seem to have done the trick, Chief." 

Blair squinted up at Jim. "You know, man, there are just some fundamentally yicky things that go with you that I'm never fully prepared for. I think that was one of them." He watched quietly as the older man ducked into the bathroom, listened as he washed his hands. 

It was Jim's turn to snort. "Join the club, Darwin. Keep that in mind the next time you're making cracks about my love life, all right?" he replied, coming out of the washroom as he finished drying his hands. 

Blair swallowed a laugh. "Don't even try blaming _that_ on coming ... online again, man," Blair chastised. "You were going downhill fast a long time before that old black magic kicked in! Joel plus two tequila shooters means the romantic history of James J. Ellison in Technicolor!" He watched as Jim gathered up the e-mails and handed them back to him. 

"I don't have any secrets anymore, do I?" Jim asked, his low voice a thread of darkness in the over-bright hospital room. 

"You're nothing but secrets," Blair replied, just loud enough, and he was surprised at the bitterness, at the weariness that laced his words. "That is, after all, what got us here." He dropped the e-mails, looked up to see Jim standing there, and he was shocked to find the other man's face so pale it looked like he had to be bleeding inwardly, like he had to have a hole in him somewhere the size of a cannonball. "Aw, shit, man, I didn't mean it like that," he wheezed, only to descend into another fit of coughing. Once again Jim was there, holding him, wiping spit and mucous away, setting him down softly when it was through. 

"Yes you did, Sandburg," Jim said quietly, grimly. "You meant it exactly like that." He threw out the wet tissues, washed his hands, and headed out of the room without another word. 

Blair leaned back against his pillows, a vise in his chest that had nothing to do with the pneumonia. 

)0( 

He slept with the broken pieces of the flute under his pillow, so that his hands could find them in the darkness, so that he could remember the fragility of precious things, rare things. He left the sharp edges, like a penance. 

At night, sometimes, he would lay in the darkness, sleepless, holding the flute so tightly his hands went numb. Other nights, he slept a little, and dreamed he was alone in the forest, searching for a dying wolf and finding only its spoor and blood and the echo of its cry. 

In the morning he'd put the flute away, he'd lock the dreams away, and he'd do his job and visit Blair and take slow even breaths and just keep swallowing it all down. 

)0( 

Blair sat on the bed, holding the plastic bag marked "Patient's Possessions" and watched as Jim gave the area a once-over. "Man, I am so glad to be getting out of here. They clued into me week one and suddenly it was Attila the Nurse bringing me the sponge bath and the meds. And the 'white meal' -- enough to make a man crave Wonderburger." He shuddered theatrically, making Jim smile. 

"Yeah, well, keep thinking that, 'cause if you make one crack about my cooking you can count yourself lucky to get Wonderburger," the older man said, cuffing Blair lightly upside the head. His hand lingered slightly, cupped the back of Blair's head in a sudden, tender motion. "I'm glad you're coming home, Chief," he said suddenly, quietly. A moment later he was gone, getting the required wheelchair, and Blair was left with the phantom heat of the older man's caress. 

)0( 

Jim sat on the couch, History channel on loud enough for Sentinel ears only, and ground his molars into nothing as he listened to Blair working on his laptop at the dining table. There had been a brief argument a few hours earlier, when he had pointed out that the younger man was only a week out of the hospital, but Blair insisted on sitting up, working on his outline. The second term of summer session started in two weeks and he was due to pick up a class. When he had protested that Blair needed more time to rest, to heal further, Blair had simply pointed out that his stipend depended on his teaching, and how the hell was he supposed to make back-rent if he didn't teach? 

That had put a pretty definitive end to the argument then and there. Of the two of them, Blair had the mastery of words, and he was at his most dangerous when he used Jim's own words against him. Arguing against that would mean going back to that place and time, acknowledging what had passed between them, at what had gone unsaid. Jim knew with a certainty that they could not go there, that he could not go there. So he had simply turned his back on the younger man and turned on the television. Two hours later he didn't have a goddamned clue about what he was watching, didn't know why the hell Blair's need to get on with work was so damned terrifying, didn't know anything at all, anymore. He felt himself sliding under the water, knowing only one thing for certain: 

He couldn't look back. 

)0( 

Blair sat on the tub's edge reflectively, and considered the water carefully. A few months ago he would have sunk into the water, let it close over his head, would have wallowed in the warmth and the wave and the liquid of it. 

Now, it just turned his stomach, made his breath come in short, sharp pants. He reached down, grabbed the chain, pulled it hard, watched the water spiral away into nothing. 

He didn't cry, just spiraled away into nothing. 

)0( 

The loft was a roomy space, all things considered, but somehow, it had never echoed so big and wide. Jim played out his hearing a little, heard Blair muttering things like "cocksucker" and "neanderthal" and he wasn't entirely certain if was directed at him or the student Blair had made his own personal crusade. 

He closed his eyes against the memory of Blair's face, his battle face, hot with rage and the threat of incipient bruises. He remembered the single brief touch he'd allowed himself when he'd pulled the younger man up off his knees. After that he'd forced himself to withdraw, be practical and businesslike. Somebody had to balance the rawness and the rage that simmered in the younger man. Someone had to remember the distance. 

He reached under his pillow, found the broken flute, fondled the edges, and found them as rough and brittle as Blair's voice, muffled by the bag of frozen peas. 

)0( 

Somehow, having Jim admit he had been right mattered very little in the face of the other man's dark grief over the death of Veronica. Blair watched the pain, the regret, the betrayal flash over his partner's face, only to be shoved down under a false front of glacial reserve that Jim seemed to wear more and more often, lately. 

More and more often since the fountain. 

He sat back on his bed, and thought about that. And thought about fear-based responses. And guilt. And began, perhaps a little, to understand. 

)0( 

The gasp, the gasp, the sound of water moving, a heartbeat like thunder in his head, like thunder, and the gasp as lungs clawed for breath... 

Jim jack-knifed up from a sound sleep, body wire-spring taught and jittering with anxiety. The sound of Sandburg's heart was a drumbeat in his ears, and he was down the stairs, naked, wild, hunting, searching for his partner. 

The bathroom door splintered on its hinges as he kicked it in, swung wildly and drunkenly as he crossed the small tile floor and reached into the full tub to Blair up out of the water, his head up and out from under the water. He paused a moment, listened to the younger man's heart sputter and stutter, and then shook his partner like drowned rat. 

"What the fuck do you think you're doing!" he roared, and he kept shaking because he _was_ shaking, trembling so hard, gagging on the taste of chlorine, breathing like he was breathing for two. All these months, and he was still breathing like he was breathing for two. 

"I'm taking a fucking _bath_!" Blair roared back, wet and seal-slick in his grasp, his square hands coming up, clutching Jim so hard he thought the younger man was reaching down to his bones. "I'm taking the first goddamned bath I've been able to take since I fucking _drowned_ , fuck-you very much. Asshole." 

And then Jim felt the shaking grow worse, felt himself shake apart, and Blair's hands weren't biting into him, weren't bruising him; they were cradling him, and the water was no longer was chlorine but salt, briny and bitter and everywhere. 

He heard Blair mutter something, say something against the crown of his head, felt those hands grab his face, tilt his head up. He looked at Blair, the wet hair clinging to his face like seaweed, and the anger was gone, the rage and the wryness and the reserve, replaced by concern, replaced by tenderness. "You drowned," Jim repeated hoarsely, the first time he'd ever spoken the words, and it was like coffee-ground vomit, dark and vile. 

Blair's hands were gentle on him, and he felt his Guide's lips ghost over his ear. "But I came back," he whispered. "You keep forgetting, I came back." 

)0( 

It had taken all his nerve to draw that tub, to slide into the water, to let it close over his head, but it was a necessary step, it had to be done. He had to surface on his own, for his own sake. 

But it hadn't worked out that way. One moment he'd been fighting off a panic attack in the bathtub, the next he was swinging in the grasp of one very pissed-off, very terrified Sentinel. 

And then Jim had broken down, started crying, dark ugly sobs that sounded like he was coming apart, like he was coughing up a lifetime's worth of grief and fear. Blair realized that Jim had never said that before, had never admitted it before, had probably not allowed himself to even think it in the intervening months. "You drowned," echoed in the small bathroom, echoed in them both. 

"Why, Jim?" he asked at last. "I'm here now, have been for a long time. Why have you been living like I'm still in that goddamned fountain?" 

Jim just looked up at him, eyes wide and wet and bottomless as black holes, and shook his head. "Because you still are," he whispered. He pulled Blair's hand over his heart, pushed it there so hard that Blair thought he might be able to reach in, pluck out Jim's heart. Maybe he already had. "In here, you're still in that fucking fountain. And no matter what I do, I can't bring you out, can't lead you back. Every time I look at you, touch you, I'm afraid you're going to just disappear, just fade into nothing, and _SHIT_ I can't stand this!" He started to wrench away, to find that distance again, but Blair's arms were steel about him, holding him immobile. 

"You don't believe this is real, do you?" Blair asked softly, and sighed as the older man dropped his gaze, struggled in his grasp. "Of course not. Got news for you, pal. This is real. This in totally real. This is where we are, what we are. Not the fountain. Not the beach. Not the temple. Not Rainier or CPD or anything else. This, right here and now, is where we are, what we are." He shook Jim gently. "I'm not some chick in a Greek myth, Jim. I'm not gonna disappear anywhere if you turn around and look at me, y'know? It isn't a trick or a con or a conditional release. I'm here, you brought me here, all right?" He found himself leaning in, placing kisses on each of Jim's eyes. Like lifting pennies, a small, fey part of him thought. "It's all right Jim, it's really all right." 

)0( 

Blair's mouth was warm against his eyelids, warm and alive, nothing like the cold cavern he'd known at the fountain. He found himself straining, twisting, finding the younger man's mouth, delving into it, erasing the taste of chlorine and old water and death. A part of him knew that this might be wrong, that this might cost him everything; that Sandburg, despite his words, might slip away into nothing through his fingertips, but he couldn't _not_ kiss him. Couldn't stop. 

Blair kissed him back, pulled him tight against his stocky, furry, slightly goose-bumped body. A few minutes later he was tugging at him, pulling him down into the bath, tangling with him in the still-warm water. He remembered, vaguely, Blair's words in the hospital, and the water _was_ fine, it was warm and safe and full of Blair, and maybe he was ready, finally ready to take that trip. His mouth and hands reclaimed Blair, even as Blair left his mark on him, in him, throughout him. 

Suddenly, somehow, Blair was under him, his face distorted by the water, yet still fierce with determination. Jim lowered his head, met him halfway, kissed his mouth and breathed with him, breathed for him, and there was a light so brilliant it seared away everything except what mattered most: 

Blair was alive. 

Together, they surfaced. 

)0( 

An End. 


End file.
